Brand built well but still much to improve - Staff Software Engineer ServiceNow Employee Review

2.0
Jan 28, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Bill did well in brand building, average perks, sales oriented

Cons

Engineering excellence is not only below expectation but terrible to certain extent, tech debt, poor documentation and code quality, slow, unreliable, hard to use internal tools, especially lab and code review tool, all lead to low productivity, and not many people really care, even slightest UI improvement request gets nowhere, servicenow is the only workplace I've experienced no one replies to your email even it's their own problem. untransparent and often biased performance review process, only manager have the say, and it depends on relationship you have with supervisor instead of contribution and impact you've made. title inflation - many so called Staff or higher level engineers basically doing nothing practical , the most unprofessional engineer is one I came across in Sn who still got promoted to distinguished engineer... a fair amount of SWE are internal transferred from different role without proper software engineering experience before at all, switching to Postgres won't solve all performance problems, design and code quality matters, one funny code example I encountered is a data structure is iterated four times to parse data from, where it only to be iterated once, expect all kinds of weird silly stuff, anything can happen here.

Explore other reviews about ServiceNow

5.0
Jun 3, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Big Tech health + vision + dental benefits

Cons

Significant change and movement in org.

2.0
Jun 17, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

ServiceNow had a differentiated platform and products. Early on the culture had a startup energy that was rare for a company this size collaborative teams, ownership, and a sense that people actually cared about outcomes. Working with large enterprise customers on complex workflows was interesting work.

Cons

The ServiceNow I joined was a different company. As headcount increased, so did the bureaucracy, layers, and friction that rewarded politics over execution. The layoffs of the last few years were handled poorly little transparency, inconsistent communication, and decisions that felt made far above with little thought for the people affected. The "cost optimization" messaging rang hollow against continued executive spending. For a company that sells workflow and people process tools, the irony of a chaotic RIF wasn't lost on anyone in the field or on customers. Leadership political dynamics were real. The right team, the right manager you had cover. Performance alone didn't protect you.

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